The men's race walks were expected to be Japan's only real chance at medals at the Oregon 22 World Athletics Championships, but in the women's javelin throw Haruka Kitaguchi came through with the country's first-ever women's field event medal at the World Championships as she took bronze. Kitaguchi came to Eugene in good form with a first-ever Japanese win in a Diamond League event under her belt and got off strong when she led the qualifying round with a 64.32 m throw on her first attempt.
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Kitaguchi opened with a 62.07 m that put her in bronze medal position behind Australians Kelsey-Lee Barber and Mackenzie Little, where she stayed until the fourth round. There China's Shiying Liu threw 63.25 m to move into 2nd by 3 cm over Little, pushing Kitaguchi down to 4th. It took until the final round for Kitaguchi to respond. Summoning up a big throw, she bettered Liu by just 2 cm to overtake her at 63.27 cm. American Kara Winger also came up a big closer, throwing 64.05 m to take silver behind Barber. Kitaguchi had to settle for bronze, but whatever the color it was a piece of history for Japanese women's athletics. Teammate Sae Takemoto was 11th of 12 finalists with a second attempt throw of 57.93 m.
Kitaguchi had been expected to be a solid top 8 contender, and the same went for Serena Sonoda in the women's 35 km race walk. Ranked #6 in the field in the new distance, Sonoda made no attempt to go with the three medalists when they broke away early, staying solidly in the chase pack in contention for 4th. But around 25 km she lost touch with Spanish duo Raquel Gonzalez and Laura Garcia-Caro and fell to 6th, then spent the final kilometers getting picked off one by one until she crossed the line in 9th in 2:45:09, 7 seconds behind 8th placer Viviane Lyra of Brazil. But despite fading it was still a PB that put Sonoda on the map for the next three years' global championships. 20 km medalists Kimberly Garcia-Leon, Katarzyna Zdzieblo and Shijie Qieyang repeated, Garcia Leon taking gold in 2:39:16.
Pole vaulter Seito Yamamoto has had a tough season that included a NM showing at last month's National Championships. In the men's qualifying round at Worlds he cleared 5.65 m for 15th in the field of 32. That wasn't enough to make the 12-deep final, something that took 5.75 m, but given where he was just a few weeks ago making the top half of the field has to be viewed as a pretty successful effort.
In 4x100 m qualification, the Japanese women's team of Masumi Aoki, Arisa Kimishima, Mei Kodama and Midori Mikase set a national record 43.33 in their heat. That was only good enough for 7th over Ireland, but a NR is a NR and that's a step forward. Not so for the men, where the 4x100 m had come to be one of the country's solid medal events up until the missed exchange in the final at last summer's Tokyo Olympics.
Between injuries, voluntary abstention and COVID, the lineup it fielded here was all-new, with none of starters Ryuichiro Sakai, Ryota Suzuki, Koki Ueyama or Hiroki Yanagita having been on the Tokyo team. But the younger team's lack of experience showed as they struggled with the exchanges, usually Japanese relay teams' biggest strength. 18-year-old anchor Yanagita ran down China and Germany for 4th to give Japan a shot at making the final, but the exchange from Suzuki to Ueyama was ruled to have gone outside the zone and the team was DQd, crushing the national hopes for the second year in a row.
It's back to the drawing boards for Budapest, but if there's one positive it's that the team this year showed that there's no shortage of talented younger guys coming up through the ranks who look to have the ability to pick up from veterans like Ryota Yamagata and Yoshihide Kiryu as they head into the tail ends of their careers. And that's not even bringing 100 m finalist Abdul Hakim Sani Brown into the conversation.
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